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The original Audi Quattro was introduced at the 1980 Geneva Motorshow and caused a sensation among motoring journalists at the time. The reason it was such an attention grabber was it's four wheel drive (4WD) transmission which gave it phenomenal road holding and traction, especially in wet or snowy conditions. Audi were not the first to produce a 4WD performance car, (the Jensen FF, a 4WD version of the Interceptor coupe was introduced in 1966 but was only produced in small numbers), but it was the first one to succeed in the mass market and popularise the idea of 4WD performance cars. Prior to the Quattro, the only 4WD passenger vehicles were large Jeep like vehicles such as the Land Rover and the Jeep Grand Cherokee, but in 1980 these were not performance orientated machines by any means.

Audi engineers were surprised when during winter durability testing in Scandinavia in 1977, their front wheel drive cars were unable to keep up with a Volkswagen Iltis, a utilitarian vehicle with far less power than the Audi saloons. The reason for this was it's superior traction thanks to a 4WD system. Audi felt it could adapt the 4WD system of the Iltis and fit it to it's road going cars, and so the Quattro came into being. Additionally, in 1980 a rule prohibiting all wheel drive in the World Rally Championship was dropped opening the way to cars with 4WD to go rallying.

One of the main driving forces behind the Quattro at the time was Ferdinand Piech, grandson of Ferdinand Porsche and between 1972 and 1992 part of the senior management at Audi. Piech has been responsible for the development of some of the greatest cars of all time including the Porsche 906, Porsche 917 and most recently the Bugatti Veyron.

Audi developed the Quattro as a rally car, and it made it's debut in the 1980 Portugal Rally as a course car (it was not listed as an official competitor as the car had not yet been homologated for rallying). Had the Quattro been competing it would have won as it's combined times were faster than the winning Fiat 131 Abarth. Initially the Quattro was entered into rallying as a Group 4 car which required 400 roadgoing versions to be made in order for it to gain homologation. The Quattro made it's competition debut in the 1981 Monte Carlo rally but both cars entered failed to finish. The 1981 Swedish rally was the 2nd race in the calender and Finnish driver Hannu Mikkola with Swedish co-driver Arne Hertz gave the Quattro it's first rally win. 1982 and 1984 brought Audi the Manufacturers Championship in the World Rally series, and some of the great drivers who enjoyed success in the Audi included Stig Blomqvist, Walter Rohrl, Michelle Mouton and Hannu Mikkola.

The 1988 specification Quattro had a turbocharged 2.2 litre 5 cylinder engine driving all four wheels, which gave 200bhp in earlier versions, later boosted to 220bhp thanks to the addition of a four valve per cylinder head.

The Quattro became one of the cars of the 1980s, and played a big part in building Audis reputation as a premium car maker. The original Quattro body shape was phased out in 1991, and they are now considered classics in every sense of the word.

AUTOart make this model of the later (220bhp) version of the Quattro (made from 1988 on) and it is a good solid model as you can often expect from AUTOart. Some of the few features I dislike on this model is the front headlights, which look a bit too plasticky to my eyes, and the wheels which also look a bit too plasticky for something that is supposed to be made of metal alloy. The tires also lack sidewall branding which is a common fault I find with many models. I believe it is a cost issue in that model makers are not willing to pay additional licensing costs to the tire makers in order to use their branding on the model's tires. The brakes however are excellent and have a realistic metal finish on the discs. Overall it is easily an above average model.